


fumbling in black memory you’ll find

by inlovewithnight



Category: The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Bodily Autonomy, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-30
Updated: 2014-09-30
Packaged: 2018-02-19 07:58:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 593
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2380769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inlovewithnight/pseuds/inlovewithnight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When he finds himself again, there's something else Bucky can do.</p>
            </blockquote>





	fumbling in black memory you’ll find

**Author's Note:**

> This is more comics-based than MCU. Though there's some MCU. That's why I filed it under "all media types"; it doesn't really fit either.
> 
> Title from Anna Akhmatova's poem of the same name; see endnotes.

He wants the arm gone.

They keep telling him to reconsider, that the arm is a marvel of engineering, it's a miracle, the sensitivity, the delicacy of what it can do, any amputee would want the arm.

Not any amputee, he tells them, because I don't. Get it off me.

The way it fastens to muscle and bone, they'll have to cut back farther to get it off. Too far to attach another prosthesis. Getting rid of the arm means REALLY not having an arm.

Get it off me.

The way it attaches to the nerves. The spine. How they grafted it in his back so he could balance while using it to tear up concrete or sheet metal. He'll be weak. There will be tremors.

Get it off me.

Let the lab see what they can do. Let them talk to Banner. Let them talk to Asgard. Maybe they can grow him a new one, like how they grow ears on mice, only they'll need something bigger than a mouse, like--

Get it off me.

They do the surgery, nineteen hours, and when he wakes up he's got no more metal in his body but he's missing a patch of skin across his stomach to build a cap for the stump, and two long strips of skin down his thighs to cover up his back and his side.

Morphine doesn't even touch the pain.

He's healed enough to leave in nine days.

**

They send Steve's friend Sam to talk to him, because he won't talk to the ones in suits and uniforms and dark sunglasses.

What do you want?

It's all the same question. He answers Sam because he doesn't thank him for his service like the others. An asset offers service, serves a purpose, fits a cold remote rhythm of language and classification. Bucky doesn't want to anymore.

What do you want?

He wants a place to live with a bed and a window. Three squares. Some books and a radio. Cigarettes and whiskey and black coffee.

We can do that, Sam says, and Bucky nods, and it's easy as that.

**

The girl shows up four months later, dark hair and cool eyes, good hands. She says her name is Kate and she's the other Hawkeye; he calls her Katie and she rolls her eyes.

They sent you to keep an eye on me?

No. Nobody sent her. She came on her own.

They sent you to keep an eye on me.

If you say so.

He drinks a coffee, smokes a cigarette, ignores her for a while. She doesn't leave.

What are you going to do now? she asks.

What I've been doing.

What's that?

He tracks his fingers across the papers on the table, over the typewriter he keeps for writing and the laptop he keeps for research. He tracks his fingers through the air so they indicate the books piled on the chairs and the shelves.

I'm remembering.

She blinks slowly. The stuff you did?

The stuff everyone did.

He flips a pen between his fingers like a knife.

Forgetting's a disease. Once you start you can convince yourself of anything.

So instead of helping them fight, you're going to...write everything down?

Somebody should do it.

That sounds really boring.

He thinks about closing his eyes and seeing nothing but ice. Now when he closes his eyes he sees names and faces going on forever. He sees lies and omissions. There's noise in his head all the time. It keeps him warm at night.

You'd be amazed.

**Author's Note:**

> Fumbling in black memory you’ll find  
> Those same long gloves,  
> A Petersburg night. And the air,  
> Close and sweet, of some dark box.
> 
> And a wind from the gulf. And there,  
> Between the lines, the cries on-stage,  
> Blok smiling scornfully at you,  
> He, the tragic tenor of his age.


End file.
